Sole Man: 15 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Running Shoes

Do you know the correct pronunciation of "Adidas" or "Hoka One One" or which companies own Brooks, Montrail or Zoot?

Fun facts about innovation, top brands and key players.

1. Let’s get right down to it: for years, many of the innovations in the technical fabrics used in running apparel and running shoe uppers have come from the innovations developed for women’s lingerie. Seriously. Think stretchy, soft, form-fitting and supportive.

2. The notion that runners should be fit into one of three types of shoes — neutral, stability and motion control — based on how much they pronate was probably always a flawed mechanism, one largely created and promoted by running shoe brands to sell shoes. Now a new study confirms it. A study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicinehas found that ordinary shoes work fine for runners regardless of how they pronate.

3. Nike was named after the Greek goddess of victory. But did you know that the image of that goddess was also depicted on the World War II victory medals and the hood ornament that adorns Rolls Royce automobiles? Or that, in the 1940s and 1950s, Project Nike was an anti-aircraft missile system? By the way, the company that became Nike was originally called Blue Ribbon Sports when it was formed by Oregon track coach Bill Bowerman and former Oregon track runner Phil Knight in 1964 as a U.S. distribution company for Onitsuka Tiger shoes (now known as ASICS).

4. The correct pronunciation of adidas is “Ah-Dee-Dass,” not the Americanized version “Uh-Dee-Duhs.” Also, it is not an acronym for “All Day I Dream About Sex.” That’s pure urban legend. The German brand is named after the company’s founder, Adi Dassler. Originally, the correct way to pronounce Hoka One One is “Ho-Kah Own-ay Own-ay.” The founders of the company have said its a Māori phrase that means “flying.” However, since Deckers has taken over the brand, we’ve been told the correct way to pronounce Hoka One One is simply “Ho-Kah Won Won.”

5. Cadavers, robotic legs, high-speed video, 3-D modeling and, yes, even real runners are used in research projects to learn more about running gait patterns, which in turn sometimes lead to running shoe innovations.

6. Brooks Sports is owned by Berkshire Hathaway, the Omaha-based conglomerate run by Warren Buffett, one of the richest people in the world. Buffett fired the starting gun at the second annual Invest in Yourself 5K at the company’s annual shareholders meeting on May 4 in Omaha, Neb. (Brooks even produced a custom Transcend shoe with Buffett’s likeness on the footbed.) Berkshire Hathaway also owns Dairy Queen, Fruit of the Loom, GEICO insurance and the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad. Brooks became the top-selling brand at specialty running retail stores in 2011, taking over the mantle held by ASICS for many years.

7. Aside from Brooks, many other brands are owned by multinational conglomerates or larger parent companies. For example, The North Face is owned by VF Corporation, a Reading, Pa., conglomerate that owns Wrangler, Lee Jeans, Smartwool, Timberland and, among other brands, Bulwark Protective Apparel, a Tennessee company that manufactures flame-resistant protective apparel.

A few others include Saucony and Merrell (which are both owned by Michigan-based footwear conglomerate Wolverine Worldwide); Zoot Sports (Seattle-based K2 Sports, which is known for several ski and snowboard brands); Montrail (Oregon-based Columbia Sportswear), Salomon (Finland-based Amer Sports, which also owns Suunto watches, Precor USA fitness equipment and Arc’teryx outdoor clothing); and K-Swiss (which was purchased in January 2013 by South Korean retail conglomerate E. Land).

8. Inov-8, a British brand of shoes, celebrated its 10th anniversary last year. The company got its start by building fell running shoes (a British version of trail running), but has made its mark in the U.S. with its lightweight trail running shoes and CrossFit shoes. (At the 2003 World Mountain Running Championships in Alaska, New Zealand’s Melissa Moon won the women’s elite race in a pair of Inov-8’s original Mudroc 290 shoes she borrowed after arriving in Anchorage without her luggage.)

9. Steve Prefontaine will forever be associated with Nike, partially because he was coached by Bill Bowerman, one of the company’s founders, and because he was Nike’s first sponsored runner. But Pre didn’t wear Nikes when he won the 5,000 at the 1972 U.S. Olympic Trials and placed fourth in the event at the 1972 Olympics. He wore adidas, just as he had throughout most of his high school and early college career. He didn’t start wearing Nikes exclusively until April 1973, when he was in his senior season at Oregon.

10. Several new running shoe brands have burst on the scene in the past several years, including Skechers, Newton, Under Armour, Hoka, Zoot and Altra. But there have been numerous other brands that have come and gone through the years, including KangaROOS, LA Gear, Etonic, Diadora and Converse. (Yes, a few of those brands are still around in various forms.)

11. Several running brands have unsuccessfully tried to incorporate electronics into shoe models. Among those are the Puma RS-100 Computer Shoe (1986), LA Gear CrossRunner shoes with red LED lights in the heels (1992) and the adidas 1 (2005). The adidas 1, which sold for $250, had a small motor built into the midsole of the shoe that would turn a cable and change the compression characteristics of the cushioning between every stride.

13. New Balance and Nike are among the brands that have been working on ways to print an actual shoe. Yes, that’s right, “print” an actual shoe. Using a leading-edge 3D printing technology, each brand has successfully created shoe components out of nylon polymer materials. New Balance had already printed up working samples of lightweight shoes for some of its athletes. The use of 3D printing has been used for years for prototype modeling, but in the past most of the models were printed with a water-based corn starch solution. But the use of stronger and permanent synthetic polymers could change manufacturing considerably, especially when it comes to custom-fitting to a runner’s exact foot size and shape.

14. In 2011, many athletes, running retailers and industry insiders rolled their eyes when Skechers, a huge lifestyle footwear company known for its casual shoes, it was going to enter the running market. It started by sending then-36-year-old Meb Keflezighi some of the early prototypes of its GoRun shoes and he liked how they performed. That summer, he signed a two-year sponsorship deal with the Manhattan Beach, Calif.-based company and helped jump-start that brand into the performance running category. Since then, Skechers has benefited from Keflezighi’s continued success (fourth in the 2012 Olympics, 2014 Boston Marathon win), built award-winning running shoes and slowly gained shelf space at specialty run shops. Plus, it recently signed American marathoner Kara Goucher.

15. Is Minimalism Dead? No, not hardly. The minimalist running movement isn’t dead, but the pendulum has certainly swung back the other direction. The once white-hot trend has cooled considerably, but it benefitted us all — no matter if you’re a barefoot zealot or a FiveFingers diehard or have always been content wearing a trusty pair of ASICS Kayanos or Nike Pegasus as your primary shoe of choice. Yes, a class-action lawsuit was just settled about some of the claims Vibram made about its FiveFingers shoes. A claim that any shoe can make you faster or stronger is ridiculous, but that being said, there are plenty of runners have adapted well to minimalism and have found those to be their shoes of choice. Other runners use more minimally designed models for certain types of workouts or drills. There are a lot of great shoes in every category now, from extreme minimalism to extreme maximalism.

Brian Metzler

Brian Metzler is the editor-in-chief of Competitor magazine. He has run more than 60,000 miles in his life, tested more than 1,200 pairs of running shoes, raced every distance from 50 yards to 100 miles and completed two Ironman triathlons. Email him at bmetzler@competitorgroup.com.